Monday, October 15, 2012

I realize that it has been a
while since I returned to the Center for Theological Studies. You may have
assumed that I would never return, but God’s grace has granted me some time to
return to a study of the Word of God and those who try to demolish it. While my
network server was down last night, the Spirit laid it upon my heart to pick up
Dr. Jerry Walls’s Purgatory: The Logic of
Total Transformation and continue to plow through his philosophical
contemplation of the Doctrine of Purgatory as well as the place (Purgatory)
itself.

In the chapter I am in
(chapter 2, called “Protestant Objections and Alternatives to Purgatory”),
Walls addresses Protestant disagreement with Purgatory head-on and does not
attempt to dismiss it. I applaud him for this; and I even agree that Purgatory,
when contemplated only as a
philosophical doctrine, could very well be a rather logical doctrine for not
just Roman Catholics, but Protestants as a whole. Where I disagree with Dr.
Walls, however, concerns his placement of the philosophical discussion above
that of the theological discussion concerning Purgatory and the eternal
destinations of both the saved and the unsaved. I have obtained a Master of
Divinity degree in Christian Apologetics, and have pondered the questions of
the existence of evil and the existence of God, evidences for the Christian
faith, how Christian faith can lead the way in the societal arts, and so on
(thank you so much, Dr. Bruce Alva Little, for pouring into my life). At the
same time, I am not so learned or educated that I would ever place philosophy
above the Word of God. The same God whose Word I read on a daily basis is the
same God who has said in His Holy Scriptures, “Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and do not lean on your own
understanding” (Proverbs 3:5, NASB). When philosophy comes before the God
that makes logic possible, there is a problem with the individual rather than
the text of Scripture itself.

To see this truth, let us
consider Walls’ use of John Fletcher in his work. In chapter 2, Walls takes the
time to consider the views of Jonathan Edwards (a conservative, Calvinist
theologian) as well as John Wesley, a conservative Anglican theologian known
today for the theological position we call “Wesleyanism” or “Wesleyan
Arminianism.” He examines the views of these two theologians (along with John
Fletcher, Wesley’s dear friend) in order to show that strong, assumed
“conservative” theologians argue that holiness and a transformed life must
exist in any individual that desires to enter into heaven upon the end of life.
As I read his analysis of Jonathan Edwards, my mind went back to Edwards’
famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” Although I consider
myself to be distant from Calvinism (whether hyper or not), I have great
respect for Calvinists like Jonathan Edwards who held to human responsibility
in salvation and the need for true repentance and confession of sin. Holiness
should be not only the word of piety on the lips of theologians, but also an
act that demonstrates faith in the life of every Christian.

John Fletcher provides an
analogy of older men and women who still long to sin as they did in their youth
to show that dead men and women still desire to sin:

“When old drunkards and
fornicators are as unable to indulge their sensual appetites as if they
actually ranked among corpses, do they not betray the same inclinations which
they showed when the strong tide of their youthful blood joined with the rapid
stream of their vicious habit? Is this not a demonstration that no decay of
the body, --no, not that complete decay which we call death, has any necessary tendency to alter our moral habits?” (John
Fletcher, “A Polemical Essay on the Twin Doctrines of Christian Imperfection
and a Death Purgatory,” from Checks to
Antinomianism; Dr. Jerry Walls, Purgatory:
The Logic of Total Transformation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012,
pg. 50. Underline mine.)

Fletcher uses the example of
elderly men and women to make the case that the dead, like elderly men and
women, lack the ability to indulge in sin to the desired extent (although both
want to do so). It seems as if Fletcher says here, “Are not elderly and the
dead the same?” I would argue that at best, Fletcher’s analogy points to a similarity, though not an equivalency, between the two.

Elderly men and women are
unable to do many things they did when they were young and in the prime of
their lives. I have heard my grandparents speak many times of what they would
do if they could go back and be “25” or “16” again. I am now 28 years old, and
I even contemplate how I would have made better use of my free time in college
“if I could go back”.

However – and this is where
the line is drawn – the elderly and dead are not the same in every way. An
elderly person, though unable to do many things, can still walk, talk, speak,
eat, drink, sleep, awake, move, and so on; a dead person, however, can do none
of these things. He or she will “sleep” until the resurrection, but cannot
arise from the grave each morning and greet the morning sun as it rises in the
East – or watch the sun set in the West at sundown. In this regard, the elderly
and the dead are not alike. While the elderly are unable to do many things, the
dead are unable to do anything!

What about John Fletcher’s
argument? Is there any truth to it? No. One such example that the apostle Paul
offers up in Romans 7 concerns the marriage bond. Paul states:

“Or do you not know,
brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has
jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is
bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies,
she is released from the law concerning her husband. So then, if while her
husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an
adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that
she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man” (Romans 7: 1-3,
NASB).

Did you notice the phrases
“as long as he lives,” “while he is living,” and “if while her husband is
living”? These phrases place a condition upon the truths affirmed in them. That
is, “as long as he lives,” he is to remain married to his wife (and she to
him). Upon his death, however, “she is not an adulteress though she is joined
to another man.” Paul says that the marriage bond is broken in the death of one
spouse, freeing the other to take another spouse in the bonds of marriage. If
you do not believe this is true, why is it that when couples marry, part of
their vows consists of the phrase “Til death due us part”?

What happens at death that
nullifies the marriage contract, the idea of paying bills and taxes, the action
of voting, reporting to work, working to provide for one’s family, and so on?
Death is a separation between an individual and his or her loved ones and
friends. Death, as the Old Testament says it best, is a “cutting off” of an
individual’s life, a time when believers such as King David “sleep with their
fathers” (cf. 1Kings 2:10; 11:21, 43; 14:20, 31; 15:8, 24, etc.) and identify with
those who have died and gone on to their eternal reward (“the church
triumphant”) rather than those who remain on the earth (“the church militant). Jesus
says that, whereas living individuals marry, deceased persons do not (cf. Luke
20:34).

This notion of marriage,
however, seems to disagree with Fletcher’s notion. If, as Fletcher says (and
Walls quotes him in agreement), the dead still have sinful inclinations as
though they were alive, is it not the case that the dead still want to marry
despite their buried state? Yet and still, however, Jesus says that the
afterlife does not consist of marriage, but that humans are as the “sons of
God,” or the angels. Do angels marry on a certain basis? If Jesus’ words in
Luke 20:34, Matthew 22:30, and Mark 12:25 are true, then angels do not marry
and humans in the afterlife will not, as well. Why do deceased individuals not
marry, if they want to marry? They do not marry because they do not need to.
The human longing for companionship is an earthly
lust that does not exist or pose a problem for Christians who are in eternity
with Christ.

We see the singleness idea
as transcending the marriage state in the Scriptures. Not only do we have
Jesus’ words that singleness prevails in heaven (which will last “for ever,” as
compared to the small amount of time that life on earth will last), we also
have the words of Jesus to the disciples in the context of divorce:

“Not all men can accept
this statement [“it is better not to marry,” Matt. 19:10], but only those to
whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from
their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and
then there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:11-12).

Jesus says that there are “those
to whom it has been given” to refrain from marriage and remain single. This
statement directly opposes the “there is someone for each of us” statement that
many families speak to their single relatives. In line with Christ, the apostle
Paul offers his words of wisdom to the Corinthian congregation:

“So then both he who gives
his own virgin daughter in marriage does well,
and he who does not give her in marriage will do better” (1 Corinthians 7:38).

In other words, marriage
(the desired state for many) is a gift, but so is singleness. In the words of Paul,
singleness is the better gift because it “is appropriate and to secure
undistracted devotion to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:36).

There are those here who are
“eunuchs,” whether deemed so by God at birth, a result of the sinfulness and
wickedness of the world, or of their own choice. Jesus does not condemn these
reasons for why an individual remains celibate for a lifetime; instead, He
tells the disciples that those who are called to be single are to live a life
of singleness. Even in his discussion, He does not condemn those who choose to
live the married life. Unlike many statements about singleness that have been
made by many believers, I will not “rub in” Paul’s words about the exalted
state of singleness.

Fletcher’s statement (and
Walls’s) is that deceased individuals have the same sinful desires as those who
are alive; but to presume this is to forget that such sinful inclinations are
the actions of living, human beings. Humans are hungry when they are alive; they
are thirsty when they are alive; they are tired when they are alive. As they
near the time of death, however, they begin to put away the earthly necessities
of food and drink. I saw this with my own mother; three days before she
breathed her last, she slept. She did not eat food nor consume any drink. For
her, the human inclinations of hunger and thirst belonged to humans who
expected to live another day. She, however, knew her time on earth was coming
to an end. Neglecting to eat and drink (and knowing that to do so was a
cognizant choice to die) was mom’s way of accepting the end that was soon to come.
In the same way, my sister Danielle and I chose to not resuscitate mom, should
she stop breathing on her own. We did so not because we wanted her to die; our
choice to not resuscitate was our way of surrendering to the will of God, a
will that we acknowledged as greater than our own.

I will continue with more on
Jerry Walls’s work on Purgatory in my next post. God bless...

Something to Think About:

"It is true that the Bible does not specifically say that foreknown faith was the condition of election in eternity past...to recognize that God did not spell out for us in the Bible why He chose the elect is not the same thing as saying that we cannot know whether there was a condition and what that condition was. God's being the same yesterday, today, and forever means that if we know why God chooses people now, we can reason back to why God chose the elect in eternity past." --F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, page 186.